


Perhaps Not A Word

by CinnamonLily



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Lots of it, M/M, Pack Feels, Poetry, is it sterek or isn't it?, sadly none is mine, the loft is big enough to fit everyone and their uncle, with a bit of humor thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 20:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinnamonLily/pseuds/CinnamonLily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wouldn't that be nice? To be able to actually see things like they were meant to be seen. Not in flashes of lights and colors, not from another person's point of view or from memories only.</p><p>To see without having to touch and familiarize, to see and not have to guess. He wanted his sight back, but that wasn't in the cards. Not with what had been done to him. There was no way he'd get it back and it made the rage inside him raise its head again.</p><p>It was obviously going to be a bad, bad night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perhaps Not A Word

**Author's Note:**

> This is a universe where the alpha pack has been sorted in some way. Hot teacher doesn't make an appearance and probably never did. Oh and I've watched the show up until 3x06, JSYK.
> 
> I don't have a TW beta, so my apologies. Also, the odd sentence structures are mine, not something that's there for the lack of editing. That's just how I write.

 

* * *

 

Someone, most likely Stiles, was watching Tomb Raider—again—in the kitchen, the only room he allowed TVs in.

_"To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour."_

The words of how the poem continued swirled in his head and he rubbed his temples to get it to stop.

"To see." Yes, to see.

Wouldn't that be nice? To be able to actually see things like they were meant to be seen. Not in flashes of lights and colors, not from another person's point of view or from memories only.

To see without having to touch and familiarize, to see and not have to guess. He wanted his sight back, but that wasn't in the cards. Not with what had been done to him. There was no way he'd get it back and the thought made the rage inside him raise its head again.

It was obviously going to be a bad, bad night.

Growling, he reached blindly—a tiny part of him laughed at the thought—to his right, where his cane normally was. The cane Isaac had made for him from a birch tree.

"Birch is for adaptability," the boy had whispered. "They say it's good for that and… and for renewal. New beginnings."

His hand knocked the cane off and he could hear it bouncing to the floor. Growling, he dug his claws into the arms of the chair he sat in, feeling a hint of shame for the ragged feel of the fabric under his palms. He'd done this too often, hadn't he?

Right, what had Deucalion said? Use your instincts? Learn how to be a wolf again, from another angle. That was at least part of keeping it together.

He sat straighter in the chair, leaned back, and breathed deeply. He started when he realized he was no longer alone.

 _"Every wolf’s and lion’s howl, raises from hell a human soul…."_ The voice of his companion all but whispered from behind the chair. How they'd gotten there without being noticed was obvious: the anger wiped his senses and left him vulnerable.

"Please, no more Blake," he asked.

Didn't beg, because Blake wasn't that bad and because he never begged, not for anything. Ever again. He'd promised.

"Alright…." A thoughtful pause in the words, but not in the steps that now circled to his front slowly.

He could almost see the way the young body moved. How lithe each movement was, how balanced the steps. The large hands would be calm tonight. No gesturing, no flailing like usual. Stiles had become so much better with that when he couldn't duck for cover from the boy's arms anymore.

He could tell the exact moment when the human picked the next poem. The telltale sound, a small, sharp, delighted inhale that was so, so familiar to him by now.

So he waited patiently, sat there with his back straight, hands—now clawless, because Stiles's presence had calmed him right down—on the arms of the chair, his feet firmly on the floor with his thighs parted for the human's favorite space.

To his surprise, Stiles didn't stay standing and didn't kneel. Instead, he climbed awkwardly into the chair, sat on his lap like a child, and raised a hand to tangle his long, long fingers into his dark hair.

 _"The sensitive, orbic, underlapp'd brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are. The curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves...."_ Stiles recited in his most seductive, hushed voice.

The words flowed straight into his ear, the breath misted over his skin like a caress. He felt the shiver first, a telltale tug somewhere deep inside, then the first curls of arousal in the pit of his stomach.

"Oh God, get a room, you two!" A sharp, dramatic tone interrupted the moment.

He could _almost_ see how Stiles lifted the hand on his chest and promptly flipped Peter the bird without moving his head to look at the man.

"Come on now, Peter, he's waxing poetic about Derek's balls!" Scott came to Stiles's rescue. Where he'd been in the apartment, Derek didn't know. Probably somewhere quiet, calling or texting Allison.

"Who's waxing Derek's balls?" Lydia deadpanned, her voice filled with obvious interest.

It was amazing how she, a vibrant person in every single way, could be in the room and sink into the background to be unnoticed. Although that only happened while she sank into a textbook so deep and complex that Derek couldn't have understood more than a word even back when he could still see to read.

"Would you all just leave us be?" Derek asked, keeping his words mild, still not moving, just speaking in a tone they all found slightly creepy.

He was different now. Kinder, Stiles said often.

He could feel Isaac stepping into the living room, and turned his head to face him. "Isaac, would you take them all somewhere?"

Isaac, who was now his right hand, cleared his throat. "Yeah, sure," he said, but his tone was conflicted.

Derek could tell Isaac still worried. He didn't want to leave his alpha's side. Not even after…. Derek sighed, but then Stiles's hand rubbed a circle on his chest, right over his heart, and he relaxed again. He'd driven his beta off once, he wouldn't do it again. He'd promised that, right after he'd promised frantic, worried Stiles he'd never ask to die again.

Being blinded had been a curse, at first. He'd pleaded for death. He'd almost taken things into his own hands before Stiles had crashed into him, physically and metaphorically, in their darkest hour yet.

Who knew he had to go blind to find that Isaac was his invaluable second in command, that Peter could be an asset when he dealt with several alphas in his inner circle, and that he'd had his mate with him all this time without realizing.

"Thank you." It was Stiles who said it, not turning his face from where his breath on Derek's neck still made the wolf shiver in anticipation.

"Guys?" Isaac called up the stairs, and soon the rest of the group pounded down the spiral steps.

By going blind, Derek had also learned that sometimes people weren't at all what they seemed to be.

"Ethan and I won't be long tonight." Aiden walked closer with his twin in tow.

Danny hovered in the background like always, and Lydia joined him, like always. The four of them were their own little unit now, their own tiny pack of two alphas and two humans. It was weird, but it worked for everyone.

"Yeah we'll take Danny and Lydia home and come back downstairs." The unspoken "in case you need us" in Ethan's tone was clear to everyone.

They thought they were responsible as well. They'd already seen one alpha without eyesight. Deucalion, before he left Beacon Hills for good, had told Derek that the twins would obey Derek and protect what was his with their lives, pack or not, as long as they could be together and safe.

They weren't Derek's pack. He really only had the remains of his blood family and Isaac in his pack now. But like people said, family wasn't bound by blood, and all the misfits in this room were Derek's family now, even if they weren't his pack.

"He's zoning out. We should go," Scott piped up from the other end of the loft's huge main space.

"How can you even tell?" Peter, always the snarky, asked.

"He stopped petting Stiles."

"Oh."

One by one they filed out of the apartment that had become not only Derek and Stiles's home, but a group hangout.

The twins lived one floor down, directly below the loft. Isaac had come back and refused to leave, "no matter what you throw at me".

Stiles had told Derek that Isaac's decision had more to do with the fact Scott was a bit thick in the head still, no matter how many fancy words he memorized. What Stiles meant with that, Derek wasn't sure.

When the elevator stopped somewhere several stories below them, Derek nodded at Stiles.

"Whitman?" he asked, and felt the familiar, welcome warmth of Stiles's lips on his jawline.

"Mhmm…."

"Well then…." Derek tilted his head and let Stiles explore his neck with little nips and bites, while he tried to recollect something else by the poet.

He'd seen several of Stiles's well-guarded poetry books he never borrowed to anyone. When Derek had lost his sight, he'd learned how each of the books felt in his hands, because Stiles had handed them over, two or three every night, and asked him to pick one from which he'd read a bedtime story for them both.

He remembered the feel of _Leaves of Grass_. The smoothness of where the gold lettering of the cover had worn away, the corners that Stiles--or maybe Mrs. Stilinski well before Stiles was ever born--had taped the fraying edges. It had been a favorite or hers and was her son's too.

Finally, several minutes later when his breathing began to resemble the speed of his heartbeat and Stiles was squirming in his lap, he recited his mate Whitman's _A Glimpse_.

Stiles stilled, pressed his forehead against Derek's shoulder—now mysteriously bare, where had his shirt gone? —and hugged him close for a long time.

Derek detangled his hand from the remains of yet another of Stiles's t-shirts and pressed his palm against the skin of his mate's back. He could feel the paths of his claws there, crisscrossing the pale skin like a blind man had tried to play connect the dots with Stiles's moles. He hadn't, for the record. It was something they both enjoyed, though, the primal contact between human skin and wolf claws.

"I love you too," Stiles said suddenly. He lifted his head and Derek knew Stiles was looking him into his unseeing eyes. "I love you, Derek."

Nothing Derek's still-intact senses could tell him suggested Stiles wasn't completely, utterly honest. Having never seen, he could only imagine the almost-liquid chestnut brown eyes filled with emotion that would never leave them. Or maybe he had seen it, before. He'd seen the fondness, at least. Seen the gazes that were meant to be covert, but never quite managed.

Derek closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

"I can see that," he whispered into the hairsbreadth between their lips.

**Author's Note:**

> The poems mentioned and/or quoted are Auguries of Innocence by William Blake, and Spontaenous Me and A Glimpse by Walt Whitman. Those aren't mine, obviously.


End file.
